Primo Levi, la tortura e la violenza inutile: «se anch’io fossi stato torturato».

The article begins with an apparent paradox in Levi’s works: the author saw himself as someone who had not been tortured. How could a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz believe that he had not been tortured? In order to answer this question, the common thread linking Beccaria’s reflections on 'useless cruelty' to his anti-fascist interpretations in post-war Italy will be traced. Piero Calamandrei and Alessandro Galante Garrone are especially important in this regard. In this context, the author's use of the term 'torture' will be analysed from If This Is a Man to The Drowned and the Saved, demonstrating how Levi attributes a very narrow meaning to it. New light will be shed on his posthumous dialogue with Améry and his concept of 'useless violence'. Despite their differences, the article argues that both Améry and Levi converge in identifying the specificity of Nazism as the intention to inflict death with the utmost pain.